I’m a staff writer at Forbes covering real estate: from ultra-luxury homes to foreclosures to the people making the deals happen. Until recently, I was a member of our Forbes wealth team, crunching numbers for our Forbes 400 and World’s Billionaires lists. Before that I investigated a former Hell’s Angel for the City Pages of Minneapolis, trekked to the U.S.-Mexico border with the Minutemen for the Orange County Register, and exposed Michael Jackson’s property tax problems for the Santa Maria Times. A born and bred Westerner with strong ties in Minnesota, I love calling NYC home. Twitter: erin_carlyle. Got tips? Email me at ecarlyle@forbes.com.

First billionaire Ira Rennert builds the biggest home in the United States: a 29-room, 39-bathroom, 110,000-square foot monstrosity in Sagaponack that his neighbors call “something you would see in Dubai.” Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, he brings in the industrial strength helicopter.

My favorite passage from the Harkinson piece (referring to Frank Dalene, one of Rennert’s neighbors):

Last year, he founded the Quiet Skies Coalition, an anti-helicopter group that has become one of the most potent political forces in the Hamptons. Its wealthy members north of the Montauk Highway launched what Dalene describes as a “knock-down, drag-out battle” against “ultra-wealthy” helicopter owners who largely live on the south side, accusing them of shattering the island’s tranquillity, contributing to climate change, and poisoning the air with leaded fuel. “I am beginning to think Mr. Rennert is practicing class warfare,” Dalene wrote Rennert’s Manhattan secretary in an email that likened the noise assaults to “throwing their garbage on the other side of the tracks for us poor folks to live with.”

Rennart, worth $5.4 billion by our latest Forbes count, amassed the bulk of his fortune in the junk bond market during the 1980s, and today his Renco is one of the largest holding companies in the United States. Current holdings include RG Steel, US Magnesium and the Doe Run Company in Peru, which is the subject of an environmental pollution suit.

Reportedly, Renco’s RG Steel in Maryland has been failing to pay key suppliers, and Rennert has been accused of forcing the company into bankruptcy. Separately, last month fellow billionaire Ronald Perelman‘s MacAndrews and Forbes Holding Inc., filed a lawsuit accusing Rennart of forcing a limited liability company in which Perelman and Rennart shared equity into bankruptcy in order to use it to acquire a $109 million loan at lower-than-market rates.

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